The first person Mike Zimmer was asked to evaluate during today’s season-ending press conference was a rookie head coach by the name of Mike Zimmer.
The Vikings coach was pretty straightforward, per usual. According to Zimmer, Zimmer did some good things and some not so good things. But he never felt out of place as a first-year head coach at 57 (now 58).
“Honestly,” he said, “I never felt overwhelmed from the day I walked in.”
Zimmer, whose first head coaching job came 11 ½ months ago, said he was “lucky” for the support system of Vikings ownership, the front office and offensive coordinator Norv Turner, a former longtime NFL head coach.
“Are there some things that I would do differently? Sure,” he said. “Did I make some mistakes? Sure. But I felt like each and every day I came to work that I gave this team and the fans and the organization the very best I could give them.
“I believe in my heart that I’ll be even better next year with everything that I do just because I’ve been through all of these different things.”
Zimmer admitted that there were things he didn’t know. Not all head coaches have the capability to express that publicly.
“Were there things that surprised me? Sure,” Zimmer said. “During games were there things that happened that the referee had to explain something to me? Yeah, but I don’t think that’s unique with any coach, let alone a first-year guy.”
Zimmer was asked about the end of the Bills game, when Buffalo converted key third downs and a fourth-and-20 en route to a game-winning touchdown in the closing seconds. Zimmer had expressed regret after that game for not calling a timeout to regroup his defense before that fourth-and-20 conversion.
“I think hopefully I learned from that,” Zimmer said. Today. “Everything was so helter skelter. A team shouldn’t convert on fourth-and-20 but everything was so helter skelter at the time and it turned out to be such a critical play in the season and the game.
“Like Sunday when it was fourth-and-9 and it was kind of the same situation -everything was kind of helter skelter. The clock was going down, they were going up, we couldn’t get the call, so I called timeout on that one. Now, [the Bears] converted the fourth down, but I think I learned from the Buffalo game in that situation.
“I felt like in that situation last week against Chicago that it was a time to do it and it didn’t work out. So you say to yourself, ‘Well, maybe if we don’t call it.’ I think you can second-guess yourself on a lot of different things.”

A game against Utah always is a chance to revisit that 2013 draft-night trade between the teams, which looks better for the Wolves than it did this time last year because of Shabazz Muhammad's play so far this year.

Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer thinks linebacker Chad Greenway can still serve as a starter next year if he returns for his 10th season.
Greenway, who turns 32 in January, is owed a $7 million base salary next season. The Vikings will either restructure Greenway’s contract for a second consecutive offseason or waive him if the two sides can’t agree on a reduced salary or the Vikings are ready to move on.
“I love Chad; Chad’s a good guy,” Zimmer said. “You’d have to ask him, but I think even at his stage in his career he probably learned some things this year. And we asked him to do a lot of different things he probably hasn’t done before. He’s the kind of guy that we like to have.”
It’s the first time since Greenway’s rookie season that he missed a game. He was inactive four times due to rib and knee injuries. Greenway suffered the knee injury in Week 16 against the Dolphins that forced him to miss the season finale against the Bears.
“I feel pretty good even though I missed the first games I’ve missed in a long time,” Greenway said. “The rib injury was really kind of a fluky deal and obviously this knee thing would have put anybody out. You play a lot of football and the rib injury could have happened 10 times over. I don’t feel like I’ve become injury prone or my age has caught up to me anyway. That can happen to anybody at any point. I feel like I can continue to play somewhere – hopefully here.”
Greenway doesn’t want to uproot his family out of the Twin Cities for more money elsewhere. But it will be difficult for Greenway, who would enter his 10th season, to accept a backup position next year.
“It’s hard to be in a situation where you’re watching,” Greenway said. “I’ve just never done that and I don’t really plan on it. I’m going to go somewhere I can compete to play. If you’re in a position where you had to go somewhere else, it’s a combination of those two things — where are you going to play and have success. I want to do that here.”
Regardless of what the Vikings decide to do in the offseason, Zimmer expects to be the first one to hear from Greenway once a decision has been made.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with him or anybody else,” Zimmer said. “I would be the first one, if it wasn’t going to work out or Chad didn’t want to be here, I’d expect that him and I would have the first conversation of anyone. I have total amount of respect for him and I will treat him with the same kind of respect.”

Head coach Mike Zimmer said today that he will push for the Vikings to bring back Adrian Peterson whenever the running back’s suspension ends this offseason.
“Well, as I’ve said many, many times, Adrian was always great with me,” Zimmer said. “I think he’s a good person. I think obviously he’s a great running back and if it works out that way and things work out and he gets his life in order — that’s the most important thing, he gets his life in order, he gets the opportunity to come back — then I will be in his corner whenever the decision is made.”
Peterson was suspended by the NFL after he pleaded no contest to recklessly injuring his 4-year-old son last May. If he stays out of further legal trouble and completes the terms of his suspension set by the league, he will be eligible for reinstatement on April 15.
But Peterson will carry a cap number of $15.4 million in 2015 if he does not restructure his contract with the Vikings, something he told ESPN he feels no need to do. The front office will then have to decide whether it’s worth paying Peterson, but Zimmer thinks he can still bring value to the Vikings.
“I think he would add value to any team, to be honest with you,” Zimmer said. “I think the kid’s a heck of a football player. I just was watching our offensive tape, I was starting to go back right now with evaluating our players and I was starting with the offense in St. Louis, so it was a good recollection on my mind right now of him.”
Zimmer hopes there is a quick resolution from the league regarding Peterson so the Vikings can determine whether the former league MVP is someone they can build their offense around in 2015.
“Our hands our partly tied with the NFL and the timeframe that they give us. But also it’s partly up to Adrian and make sure he’s doing what he has to do in order to get back reinstated off the suspension,” Zimmer said. “So those are all factors that we have to factor in, but we would love to know ASAP just so that we can start going because a guy like him your football team and your offense can be different [if] you have him and you don’t have him. It’s how you want to build the team around him, at least in my opinion anyway.”
He added: “I haven’t talked to [G.M.] Rick [Spielman] about a lot of these questions that you’re asking yet because we just finished the season. But we’ll sit down and [talk] about all of this stuff.”

We’re not sure how much of this is belief on the part of the author or the need to fill space as we march toward the Wild Card weekend, but SI.com’s Greg Bedard notes that in every year for the past decade, at least one NFL team with a playoff bye has lost its first playoff game — and he thinks the Packers (along with the Broncos) are ripe for a quick exit.
It seems to be contingent on the Packers playing the Cowboys — not a given since the matchups have to line up and Dallas still needs to defeat the Lions in the opening round — but here’s what he wrote:
Since the Thanksgiving blowout loss against the Eagles, the Cowboys are scoring an average of 41.3 points and allowing 19.8, and a lot of the games haven’t been that close. Dallas’ defense (22nd in DVOA) would certainly have problems stopping Aaron Rodgers and the Packers’ high-octane offense, but the ultimate antidote is a ball-control offense. Few teams can control the clock like the Cowboys, thanks to an outstanding offensive line and running back DeMarco Murray. … Add in the Dallas passing game (Tony Romo finished with a higher passer rating and completion percentage than Rodgers) and the fact that the Cowboys were a perfect 8-0 on the road this season, including a victory at Seattle, and the setup is there for a tremendous matchup, if not an outright upset, if the two teams meet at Lambeau Field.
Indeed, that would be the most intriguing matchup of the divisional round if it came to fruition. And it would be no sure thing, at the very least, that Aaron Rodgers would finally move out of his tie with Daunte Culpepper for career playoff victories (one) at Lambeau Field.